


A Reconstructed Struggle

by Itsbeenawhile7



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s06e06 How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, Episode: s06e19 The Unnatural, Episode: s07e01 The Sixth Extinction, Episode: s07e02 The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati, Episode: s07e15 En Ami, Episode: s07e17 All Things, Episode: s07e22 Requiem (X-Files), Episode: s08e021 Existence, Episode: s08e13 Per Manum, Episode: s09e16 William, Episode: s10e01 My Struggle, Episode: s11e09 Nothing Lasts Forever, Episode: s11e10 My Struggle IV, F/M, Fix It Fic, Fix-It, MSR, Movie: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), Movie: The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008), Season/Series 06, Season/Series 07, Season/Series 11, mulder/scully relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 14:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15932060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsbeenawhile7/pseuds/Itsbeenawhile7
Summary: A canon-compliant fix-it fic for My Struggle IV.  Scully has a vision that brings her a new understanding of her past, present, and future.Her entire history, *their* entire history, is being rewritten.





	A Reconstructed Struggle

**Author's Note:**

> Way back in March, immediately after My Struggle IV aired, my first thought was the following: why, if this is the story you _really_ wanted to tell us, did you not ACTUALLY TELL it? This certainly isn’t the story I would have chosen to close the book on these characters, but this is the end result of having grappled long and hard with the central themes so poorly presented to us in MSIV.
> 
> There are some non-network-television friendly liberties taken with language, and a few giant leaps away from Chris Carter’s zone of Platonic Behavior.

**part one: a warning sign**

**___________________________________________**

_Farrs Corner, VA  
_ _3:42 AM_

Scully’s eyes move rapidly beneath her closed eyelids, her body stretched stiff and unusually straight in the bed where she sleeps.  Mulder is curled up just inches away, soft and relaxed, in stark contrast to her own fraught repose.

An ominous vision is unfolding.   Her entire history,  _their_  entire history, is being rewritten.  The narrative stitches itself together in the REM state she occupies, as intricate and circuitous as a spider web.  She is ensnared, frozen at the mercy of the devastating new reality playing out before her.

**___________________________________________**

  
Diana Fowley stands, sheet white, watching with apprehension as a team of surgeons stitch up sections of angry red flesh over Mulder’s skull in the operating theater below her.

A woman in a lab coat moves to stand next to her, and gently touches her arm.  “I know you have been struggling with your work on this project, but you made the right call, Diana.  Mr. Spender will not suffer from the same neurological overstimulation that his son was experiencing.  He’s had extensive gene therapy to prepare for the activation of his remnant DNA.”

“Mr. Spender is  _always_  prepared, isn’t he?”  Diana says sardonically.  She presses her palm against the cool glass pane, imagining the warmth of Mulder’s skin as her hand caresses the window over the view of his chest, vividly remembering another time, another life.  She aches for another path, one in which her choices had been different.

It’s all lost to her now.  

“I’m not worried about  _him_ ,” Diana says, sighing.  “I’m worried about his son.”

“Why?” the scientist asks, a look of genuine confusion on her face.  “We have removed the part of his brain that was responsible for his neurological decline.  His activated remnant DNA is now dormant, no longer genetically expressed.  His brain activity will be completely normal when he awakens.”

Diana turns away from the window to glare at the woman.  “You don’t know if he will even survive the surgery.  And you know as well as I do that inactivating his remnant DNA will stop the epigenetic processes that were giving him immunity to the virus.”

“Diana.  We cannot let the fate of one man get in the way of our work,” the scientist says matter-of-factly, her brief feelings of sympathy evaporating.  “Not if we are to have any hope of surviving the war that is to come.”

“I have been acquainted with that reality for quite some time now, thank you,” Diana says curtly, and turns back to the window in time to see the Cigarette Smoking Man’s eyes begin to flutter open below them.  “I’m just no longer convinced that Mr. Spender has any intention of sharing his new… _gift_ …with the rest of us.”

The scientist bristles, and steps away from Diana.  “I see that your history with Mr. Mulder is continuing to have a negative impact on your judgment.  We’re trying to save the world here, Diana.  Perhaps you should remind yourself that the most technologically advanced surgeons anywhere in the world are down there in that operating theater.  Despite whatever reservations you may have about the situation, that man is in the best of hands,” the woman says sharply, and quickly turns to walk out of the observation room.

“No,” Diana says to herself out loud, staring down at the commotion in the operating bay.  “He is not,” she says, and reaches into her pocket to pull out a key card.  

She has intimate knowledge of the motivations of all of these people.  She knows that their sole concern is the research, the collection of data points, with very little regard paid to saving the lives of the subjects they experiment upon.  All they want is the tissue.  She knows that they don’t care if Mulder dies, and the terrifying lack of attention currently being paid to him by even one single medical professional in the theater below is all the proof she needs.

She looks at the key card in her hand for a long beat, chewing on the inside of her cheek, then slips it back into her pocket.  She stares down at the floor with resignation. “But he will be,” she whispers to herself, shoulders slumping.

___

Mulder is seated on his leather couch, wincing, his body tense.  Scully stands in front of him, gently tending to the bandages circumnavigating his head.

“I can’t believe they didn’t even shave your head before they cut you open,” she says with irritation as she finishes tucking the tail end of a fresh round of gauze up around his forehead.  “Who knows how many other corners they cut?  It’s a miracle that you haven’t developed a massive infection.  Listen to me, Mulder, as much as I know you don’t want to hear it, you’re gonna  _have_  to take it easy for a while–”

Mulder wraps his arms around her abruptly, crushing her against him.

“Scully, what if he can  _hear_  you?” he chokes out, pressing his face into her abdomen. "You were the only one who could cut through all that noise.  You were incredible…your mind was…it was  _breathtaking._ It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,” he whispers hesitantly, having confessed somewhat more than he had intended to.

She swallows, and gently slides her arms around his shoulders.  

“That black-lunged son-of-a-bitch’s voice was constantly there, filling my head up with bullshit the whole goddamn time,” he continues, “but he faded away, whenever you came near me.  And Scully, he–he–he  _took_  whatever the hell it was in my head that could do that.”

“Mulder,” she starts, her hands rubbing soft circles on his back before she slips effortlessly into her familiar skeptical timbre, “even if it were somehow physiologically possible to transfer neurological skills by grafting someone’s brain tissue onto your own–which, I might add, it’s not…” she trails off, and presses her mouth into a tight line.

Her skepticism notwithstanding, her stomach still lurches at the mere thought, and she pauses to swallow back the bile that is pushing up into her throat.  Mulder clings to her, his fingertips pushing even more insistently against the sides of her waist.  She places a hand on top of his head, gently tilting his head back to look up at her.

“He will  _never_  hear what you heard,” she says softly, with an open, impassioned expression on her face.  She runs her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck.  “Whatever it was that you heard…it was only meant for you.  It belongs to  _you_ ,” she says with conviction.

She watches him closely, her words hanging heavily between them almost endlessly.  The fear in his eyes breaks, and he closes his eyes with a sigh of relief, resting his cheek against her abdomen.

___

Dr. Parenti pushes a folder across the desk toward the Cigarette Smoking Man, who is seated across from him in a Zeus Genetics consultation office.

"The news is…not good.  Our in vitro fertilization attempts failed to yield any embryos with the desired genetic profile.”

“Do another round, then.”

“We  _can’t_ ,” Parenti says, folding his arms over his chest impatiently.  “We’ve utilized all of the ova available to us.”

The Smoking Man takes a long drag on his cigarette, considering.  “Then continue the work in vivo,” he says, pushing the file folder back across the table without bothering to open it.  

Parenti stares at him, flabbergasted.  “But Dana Scully has no appreciable ovarian function.  You  _know_  that.”

The Smoking Man shrugs.  “There have been some rather remarkable advances in the microchip implant technology.  For years, they functioned as tracking devices, but they are far more useful as medical devices now.”  He pauses to take another drag on his cigarette.  “We can use her chip to temporarily restore ovarian function.”

Parenti shakes his head dismissively.  “The alien DNA that we spliced into the genes of our female test subjects was targeted specifically to genes on the X chromosome.  The superhuman phenotype is recessive and X-linked.  The offspring  _have_  to be male for there to be any genetic expression.  That’s why in vitro experimentation has been crucial to this project,” he says, opening his arms to hold his hands out in the air next to himself.  “Look, I am not telling you anything here that you don’t already know.”

Parenti gestures back to the folder on the desk.  “Which brings me back to my original point.  Dr. Lev and I were unable to produce any male embryos.  For reasons we are unable to identify, your son’s gametes skew rather remarkably toward the carriage of an X chromosome.  But we have access to hundreds of thousands of sperm samples from other individuals, and we could move with the ova of another test subject–”

“No!” the Smoking Man says forcefully.  “I need to maintain my genetic link to the boy.  And I confess that I have a bit of a…preference for this particular test subject.”

Parenti purses his lips, thinking.  “Dr. Lev is in the early stages of development of a compound that is designed to target and destroy sperm carrying an X chromosome, in preparation for the eventual expansion of experimentation to the general population.  It’s a long shot, but we could deliver it to Ms. Scully when she comes in for what she’ll believe is her embryo transfer procedure.  I have to caution you, though.  We don’t know if the compound is one-hundred percent effective, or even how long its effects will last.”  

Parenti pauses for several long beats.  “During my initial intake interview, Ms. Scully reported that she is not, um…”  He sighs, and waves his hands in a flustered, frustrated manner.  “She’s not currently sexually active.”

The Smoking Man laughs, and leans forward to put his cigarette out on the folder Parenti had offered to him earlier.  “Well.  She’s rather pathetically in love with my son.  I’m not much of a gambling man, but even I would be willing to roll the dice on this one.  It’s only a matter of time.  Perhaps they just need something to happen to…push them along.”

___

Scully’s face is fixed on the road ahead of her, a look of steel covering her features as the Smoking Man drones on and on in the passenger seat.  She has been driving for far too many hours now, but she doesn’t want to relinquish the wheel to him.  

He’s throwing bullshit psychobabble nonsense her way.  As if he has the slightest understanding of her motivations.  She struggles to keep herself from rolling her eyes, and tries to tune him out.

“You’d die for Mulder,” he says, and instantly pulls her attention back to his words. “But you won’t allow yourself to love him.”

She opens her mouth, and prepares to shut this asshole up.

___   
  
"Are you ready?” the Smoking Man says to an unremarkable associate, who types furiously on a laptop on the other side of the bedroom.  He hovers over Scully, looking down at her, and reaches out to her, trailing the fingers of his gloved hand up the back of her neck.  

“Go ahead and upload the code,” he says, the corners of his mouth twisting lecherously upward.

___

Scully stands in an abandoned office in an unmarked brick building.  Mulder encroaches upon her personal space, hovering over her with thinly contained aggression.

“ _I wore a wire_ ,” she seethes at him.  “I  _mailed_  you the tapes!  I put my safety on the line, over and over again, for no other reason but to try to keep you informed.  My decision to pursue answers about this technology was not some personal affront against you.  Have you forgotten that I have one of these things inside of me?”

He winces at her, flinching as if she had slapped him.  “Have I  _forgotten_?  Are you–are you  _really_  asking me that question right now?”

She stares impassively at him, silent.  He shakes his head, meeting her eyes imploringly with his own.  

“After everything we’ve been through together, how could you possibly say that this has nothing to do with me?  Do you really think that this isn’t personal, Scully?  Because there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about every single terrible thing that has happened to you as a result of your partnership with me.”  

She sighs.  “Mulder, I want you to listen to me–”

“No, I need you to listen to  _me_!” he interrupts. “Are you really going to just keep pretending that you don’t know how I feel about you?  Because I can’t fucking take this anymore, Scully.”

“I–I don’t want to do this here,” she whispers quickly with her eyes closed, overwhelmed, shaking her head slightly from side to side.

She has been steadfastly avoiding high-stakes discussions with him for a few months now, afraid that the high doses of hormones in her system would influence her response to him.  Two weeks ago, her infertility treatments had ended with a third and final negative pregnancy test.  She’s felt reckless ever since, overly reactionary, itching for anything to counteract the emotional fragility she has felt in its wake.  

She knows, somewhere deep inside of her, that this had influenced her decision to go along with the Smoking Man in the first place.  But she won’t admit that to Mulder.  She can’t.  She is clear about at least one thing right now: she is not presently capable of having this particular conversation with him.

“Mulder, please.  I just want to go home.”

He bites down on his lip, hard, the skin blanching beneath his teeth.  He has lost so much in recent weeks.  His mother.  His sister, and the quest central to his life’s work along with her.  The desperate hope of giving Scully something back that she had lost.  The ephemeral thought of a child, of a family just beyond his grasp–

Resigned, he nods his head, and walks past her, out of the empty office.

___

Scully blinks her eyes open, finding herself cocooned in a scratchy blanket on Mulder’s couch.  She pushes the blanket off, suddenly sharply alert, and looks down at her watch.  She has only been asleep for an hour or so, she thinks.

She stands, her brain stuttering _Mulder, Mulder, Mulder_.They had been talking right here.  She had been determined to finally bring the thing hanging between them to the ending she had spent so many, many years yearning for.

She finds him standing in his bedroom, facing away from her.  His bedroom door is wide open, and she sees him staring out the window.  She stops at the threshold, pausing to observe.  He is wearing pajama pants, and his bare shoulders hang low.  He looks resigned, as if he is waiting for something that is never going to come.  

A wave of comprehension washes over her.  He is waiting for  _her_.  He is waiting for her to wake up, and he is expecting her to leave.  In yet another revelatory moment this weekend, it finally dawns on her that Mulder has no idea about just how much he means to her. 

She understands, finally, that he has been trying to tell her how he feels for over two years now.  He had stated the magnitude of his attachment to her two summers ago, but so much personal and professional upheaval had followed, and they had lost their footing.  He had dared to speak the words plainly to her a few weeks later; but she had dismissed his affection as nothing more than a side effect.  He had tried again in the fall after his brain surgery, but she had been tangled up in the semantics of having been called “friend” when she had replayed the memory back to herself in the office that afternoon.  

And then, of course, there was Diana.  Scully had been feeling so heartsick and betrayed that it hadn’t occurred to her that perhaps he was sending her another kind of signal, his poor conduct galvanized by the distant hope of triggering a specific kind of reaction from her.  A reaction that might have finally shone a light on the truth about her feelings for him.

Mulder has broken into classified government research facilities for her, has fought tirelessly and repeatedly against a powerful syndicate of men in order to protect her and avenge her.  He has, quite literally, gone to the absolute end of the earth to save her.  And then, when those actions had seemingly failed to adequately communicate the depth of his love to her, he had engaged in more mundane strategies; courting her with Christmas hauntings and stories of star-crossed lovers, and a baseball lesson pressed up against her on a crisp Saturday night, and a tentative, zombie-bitten kiss as they had crossed into the new year.  

Hindsight tells her that spending the weekend gallivanting around England, chasing crop circles, was almost undoubtedly his idea of a quirky, grandiose date.  

And she had missed it, lost as she was in her own sullen, introspective space.  She feels a powerful, overwhelming rush of love for him.  They have waited long enough.

She steps forward, walking up behind him, and gently wraps her arms around his waist.  She presses her cheek against his back, and breathes in deeply.

“Hi,” Mulder says, appearing to perk up as a result of her physical proximity.

“Hi,” she murmurs back, and pulls his body even more firmly against hers.

He relaxes and settles his hands on her arms, rubbing them gently.  “You know, I was just standing in here trying to decide if I should wake you.  The rain is really coming down now, Scully.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to go home and change for work, but…” he says tentatively, “it’s late, and you’re welcome to, uh, stay here tonight.  If you want.”

“Mmm,” she hums.  “I was hoping you would say that,” she says tenderly, and slides the tips of her fingers under the waistband of his pajama pants, tracing the edges of his hipbones, her movements deliberate and unquestionably intimate.  She turns her head and presses an open-mouthed kiss to his spine.  

He sucks in a breath sharply, and shivers, gripping her arms involuntarily.  She begins to kiss her way up his back, moving her lips up one vertebra at a time.

“Scully…” he starts with a sigh, his voice straining with the effort of curbing his natural response to her touch.  He spins around to face her, and brings his arms back around her, tracing delicate circles at the small of her back with his fingertips.

She rises up onto her toes and presses her lips against the side of his neck, delicately swiping her tongue over his skin.

_“Scul-ly_ ,” he moans urgently, squeezing his eyes closed as she moves her mouth upwards, nipping feather light at his jawline.

She pauses and sinks back down onto her heels, then leans forward to press her lips against his sternum.  

“I will stop if you want me to,” she whispers, her mouth touching his skin.

“Oh, Scully,  _no_ ,” he says quickly.  “My God, do you have any idea how  _much_ I _…_ ” his voice stretches thin, breaking with desire.  He leans back and takes her face into his hands, lowering his head down to hers to brush his lips hesitantly against hers.  He takes a deep, shuddering breath and kisses her again, gently tugging her bottom lip into his mouth.  And then he stops, pulling back to gauge the expression on her face, needing to confirm for himself that he has not somehow misinterpreted her intentions.

“Is this okay?” he asks quietly, unable to stop his hands from shaking.  There is a hopeful expression on his face that she has never seen on him before.

She turns her face and presses a kiss against his palm, nodding.  She stares directly into his eyes, her expression soft and vulnerable.  “You are my choice, Mulder.  You have  _always_  been my choice.”

His mouth curves up into a smile of relief and he nods silently, overcome.  He lowers his head down and kisses her again, unleashing the passion that he had been holding tenuously at bay.

She pushes him backwards as she kisses him, and his legs bump up against the side of his bed.  She tilts her head, wordlessly telling him to sit down on the edge.  She lifts her sweater up and over her head, then unzips her skirt, pushing it down and off of her body.  She tugs the waistband of her pantyhose down, lifting one foot at a time to pull them off.  He sits transfixed, watching her in awe, angling his head up to look at her face when she steps between his legs.

She leans down to kiss him again, parting her lips to slide her tongue over his lower lip.  He makes a deep, strangled sound, and pulls her up onto the bed with him.  He pushes the blankets aside roughly and lays her down.  She reaches out for him, pulling his body down on top of hers.

“You know, don’t you?” he says breathlessly, resting on his forearms above her.  He lifts a hand up to brush wayward strands of hair off of her face, and kisses her forehead, her nose, both of her cheeks.

“Scully, I…” he whispers, and an immense emotion rises up and catches in his throat, cutting him off.

Fox Mulder is unfailingly articulate, and he always has words for everything, so it takes him by surprise that he is speechless now.  He presses his forehead against hers, letting his eyes slip closed, hoping that she can feel everything he can’t seem to say in the way that he touches her, in the way that he tenderly gathers her up and carefully holds her body against his.

She clutches his face, and lifts his head up so that they are eye to eye once again.  “I love you,” she says, her thumbs circling gently against his cheeks.  “I love you  _so much_ , Mulder.  And I know.”

___

Scully is sitting in a hospital bed, the room claustrophobic with all of the news it holds.  Skinner stands by her side, bearing witness to her loss, her sorrow so heavy that it presses the air out of his own lungs.

“I’m having a hard time explaining it.  Or believing it,” she says. “But, um…I’m pregnant.”

She looks at Skinner just long enough for him to connect this inexplicable gain to her loss, and if he somehow hadn’t figured it out from that look alone, the tears that follow are all the confirmation he’ll ever need.

___

Mulder is holding William, newly born, untouched by all that would eventually come to pass.

William’s face flickers out suddenly, replaced by a snow globe, a windmill, an old man at a gas station–then it stops as abruptly as it started, and stabilizes on his tiny, innocent face.

“I don’t understand, Mulder.  They came to take him from us.  Why they didn't…”

“I don’t quite understand that either,” he says, and cradles his son even closer against his chest. “Except that maybe he isn’t what they thought he was.”

___ 

“It’ll never be over,” a scarred, unrecognizable Jeffrey Spender says pointedly to Scully.  “They’ll always know what he was.  They’ll never accept what he is.”

“Well, I can protect him,” Scully says, and she almost,  _almost_ believes herself.

“And if you can’t?” he challenges her.  “Look at me…what they did.  Is this what you want for your son?”

___

Scully signs her name over and over again, flipping quickly through a stack of papers, black ink marking the end of two excruciatingly long years spent on the run.  Mulder loops his arms around her waist from behind.

“Something good is finally coming from all that dirty old money my parents left me,” he says with a grin, resting his chin on her shoulder.  “Well, I suppose technically, it's  _your_  dirty old money, courtesy of my untimely death a few years ago.”

She smiles, surprised by the true, unblemished happiness she feels.  “We’ve got more than enough to cover our tax bills, insurance premiums, and any maintenance or repairs for the foreseeable future.  I’m almost afraid to say it out loud, but…I think we might finally be free.”

“As close to escaping the darkness as you and I are ever likely to get,” he says, as sunlight streams in through the kitchen windows.

The lawyer wanders back into the room.  “How’s the paperwork going?”

They startle and jump back away from each other, grinning with a touch of embarrassment.  Mulder slips away into the living room, leaving Scully alone with the lawyer.  

“I, um…what’s today’s date, again?” she asks. “We’ve, uh, been traveling off the grid for a while now, and I guess I’ve lost track.”

“Five, nineteen, oh-four,” the lawyer offers up to her helpfully.

Scully’s face clouds over suddenly, and she hesitates before leaning down to scratch the date onto the paperwork in front of her.  

“Thanks,” the lawyer says, taking the stack from her hand.  She spins on her heels and heads for the front door.  “I’ll get this filed, and you’ll get a copy of the deed in the mail in a few weeks.”

Scully looks down at her hands as the lawyer walks out the door.  Mulder wanders back into the kitchen, his goofy grin fading when he sees the stricken look on her face.

“Hey, Scully, what happened?  What’s wrong?”

“It’s…” she starts, her voice fading out.  She looks away from him.  “It’s William’s birthday tomorrow.”

___

Scully stretches her foot forward off of the edge of her beach towel and curls her toes into the sand.  Her hair is salt-curled and tucked messily under a wide-brimmed hat.  She stares at the blinding turquoise waters in front of her, blissed out, completely content and at ease.   No other physical environment affects her the way the ocean does.  She has not felt this much like herself in a long time.

She had pulled a boat out from the garage of their rental house this morning, and they had rowed over to a uninhabited cay.  And she sits now on a perfect, unspoiled stretch of paradise in the Caribbean.  She watches Mulder now, ambling along the shore, soft foamy waves washing over his feet.  The sun reflects off of the crystal water, dancing around him.  

In spite all of the defensiveness and blame she has directed at Mulder in recent months, Scully believes wholeheartedly that the darkness has been after  _her_ , that God has targeted her, and her alone.  She has been punishing herself for years now, devoting her life to saving other people’s sons in a misguided attempt to repent for the unforgivable sin of having abandoned her own.  Mulder was right to take them here to this quiet little hideaway, right to take them far away from the brutal winter they were having this year, and all of her self-flagellation and pent up sorrow.

Mulder wanders back up from the edge of the water, and sits down next to her on the towel.  He reaches a hand out to her with a wide, shy smile.  She reaches over to take his hand, and feels something hard and smooth pressed between their fingers.  She looks at him quizzically, and closes the object into her fist.

“Sea glass,” he says with a happy, carefree shrug. 

She brings her hand back in front of her and opens it up.  The glass is flat and oblong, and matches the turquoise of the water in front of them.  She cocks her head to the side, considering his proffered treasure with interest.

“I know we both agreed on no rings, but I think we should mark the occasion with just a little something…” he trails off.  “And believe it or not, I couldn’t find the bones of even a single sea monster, and there weren’t any Martian meteorites anywhere along the shore, Scully,” he says, his shoulders shaking slightly with quiet laughter.

She clutches the sea glass against her chest, and can’t tamp down her own giddy, bubbling wave of giggles.  She’d never really thought about the simple pleasure of willful legal entanglement, not until he had suggested marriage as his second government-sanctioned activity now that he was officially back out in the open.  And he had been right about that, too.  She had been surprised by just how good it had felt to write his name down as her lawful next of kin when she had filled out all of her status change paperwork.

She pauses for just a moment, then reaches her empty hand down to the sand beside her, sifting through it until she closes her fingers around a tiny, perfect shell.  She lifts it up and slips it into Mulder’s hand.

“Well, for better or for worse, I guess we’re going to have to settle for the wonders of the earthly realm,” she murmurs contentedly.

She leans into him, stretching her body out alongside of his, as hypnotized as ever by the unconventional man beside her.

She dares herself to stay this happy.

___

Snowflakes meander down from the sky on a gentle diagonal line, depositing themselves upon the tall snowbanks surrounding the house.  Scully sits outside on the top step of their porch, holding Mulder’s hand.

“It is officially,” she says, looking down at her watch,  “December 23rd.  The world didn’t end.  Welcome to your new life.”

He doesn’t respond.  She squeezes his hand tighter.

“Hey,” she says, tugging on him until he turns his head and looks at her.  “I think it’s gonna be okay, Mulder.  Maybe we can finally let this thing go.”

“It’s  _never_  over, Scully,” he says.  He pulls his hand away from hers and stands up.  “They’ll just find another way.”

She hugs her knees and stares off into the darkness, watching as the snow keeps piling up around them.

___

“It’s been four fucking  _years_ , Mulder.  I have tried  _so hard_  to be patient.  To give you time to process everything.  But here you are, still looking for aliens and UFOs that haven’t come, that aren’t  _ever_  going to come.  We’ve lost  _everything_  that has ever mattered to us because we believed in this crap, and for what?  For  _what_ , Mulder?  Nothing we thought would happen ever came to pass.  We were safe.  We were safe the whole fucking time!  This unrelenting obsession of yours has put a stranglehold on my entire existence.  I can’t live like this anymore!”

“A…a stranglehold on your entire existence?” he says, taken aback. “Scully, do you have  _any_  idea how unbelievably hard it has been for me to have no job, no purpose, no reason at all to even leave this house?   What else is there for me to do, other than this?  My whole life, all I have ever done…all I have ever done is ask the questions that no one else wanted to find the answers to.  How can you keep asking me to stop this, when there are still so many unanswered questions?”

She does not look at him or respond.  She continues to move around their bedroom, packing items into a small rolling suitcase.  She grabs a toiletry bag and steps into the bathroom.  She rifles through the medicine cabinet, tossing products into the bag.  Mulder follows behind her, and tentatively lays his hand down on her shoulder.

“Scully, you–you were my partner in all of that.  You’ve been my partner through everything, always _._ Even when the whole goddamn world held us apart.  You have been the one single, solitary constant thing in my life for twenty-three years.  Scully, I have lost  _everything_ else.  And for years, I’ve been telling myself that all of that loss is manageable, that I can live with it, because you’re still here.  What the hell is even worth fighting for, if you aren’t fighting with me?”

“Mulder,  _please_.  Don’t say these things to me.  You can’t  _do_  this to me.  I am drowning here, can’t you see that?  I need to spend some time on–on some kind of solid ground.  I am not saying it’s going to be forever.  I am not asking you for a divorce.  I just…I need to focus on my work.  I need to try to do something to give back, something that matters, to make up for everything I’ve done–”  

She gesticulates wildly now, dropping her toiletry bag into the sink. “I lose more and more of you to this, every single day.  Everything in this house, every book, every paper, every picture, it’s dragging me back to a place in my life where I just cannot  _be_  right now.”

“But I am not lost!” he yells, frustrated. “Listen,  _okay_.  Okay.  I hear you, okay?  I know I’m not making the most productive choices right now.  You’re right.  I know I am depressed.  But I’ll figure it out.  I will.  But that’s not what this is really about, is it?  If you think that I don’t understand what is really happening here, you’re wrong.  It’s William’s fourteenth birthday today–”

She puts a hand up in his face, her eyes wide and furious.   “You need to stop talking.  Right.  Now.”

“Scully, will you just stop so we can talk about this?  You can’t keep punishing yourself just because you don’t want to talk about this.”

“No Mulder,  _you_  stop!  I’ve put down a security deposit on a rental in Bethesda.  It’s  _done_.  There’s nothing left to talk about.”

“Scully,  _please_.  Just tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it.  I will get a hobby.  I will go to therapy.  Whatever you want.  I will exercise more.  Hell, I will turn my fucking office into a home gym tomorrow, if that’s what you want me to do.  I will do  _anything_  you ask me to,” he says, his voice soft.  He reaches out to grasp her hand. “Just please don’t make me do it alone.”

“Mulder, I  _can’t_  do this with you,” she mumbles quietly, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s–it’s not you, it’s not something you can fix.  I just…I just  _can’t_.”

She pulls her hand away from his, and grabs the toiletry bag out of the sink.  Shaking, she pushes past him, and drops the toiletries into her suitcase. 

Mulder stands in silent shock in the bathroom doorway, watching mutely as she zips up her bag, and walks away.

___

The Smoking Man sits bemused in a chair in a small, eclectically furnished apartment.  Monica Reyes stands a few feet in front of him, with a gun leveled at his head.

“Tell me why you’re after William.”

“He has certain…abilities.  He can alter the perception of everyone around him.  He can make people see anything he wants them to see.  Feel whatever he wants them to feel.  His body can heal itself from any kind of illness, and regenerate from every conceivable kind of injury.  We need to study him, so we can learn to harness his abilities.”

Monica grows angrier now, advancing towards him.  “I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe any of this.  Your son Jeffrey injected him with…something, some kind of magnetite, right before he was adopted.  It was supposed to neutralize whatever…alien thing was inside of him, and allow him to live him a normal, human life.  Are you telling me that it didn’t  _work_?”

“Of course it didn’t work.  He’s not one of them.  He’s far more sophisticated than that.  And capable of unfathomable levels of destruction.  The boy is more dangerous than you could ever begin to comprehend.  He is only just beginning to scratch the surface of what he is capable of.”

“But you haven’t seen him in over a decade.  You have no way of knowing what he is like now, no way of knowing if your disgusting experiment actually worked.”

He smiles.  “I can hear his thoughts, Monica.  We’re connected by something very special.  Something that I took from his father many years ago.  The boy can see things.  Read minds.  He can open up windows into the past.  He can open up windows into the future.  He doesn’t even know that he’s doing it.  He hasn’t figured out that it is all coming from inside of his own mind.”

“If that’s true, if you can actually hear him, what do you need me for?  Can’t you just…  _hear_  wherever he is?”

He laughs again.  “It’s not a perfect science, Monica.  Like I said, he doesn’t know that he is doing it, so all he has are little pieces of the whole, just flashes of the truth.  And he doesn’t know that he is transmitting any of it out to his parents.”  He takes a drag from his cigarette. “Would you believe that the boy thinks that I am his father?” he asks with a smirk, deeply pleased with himself. “And why shouldn’t he?  I am the one who carried out this project.  I am the one who created him.”

There is a long, tense silence.  With a look of horror on her face, Monica lowers her gun.  “Who else knows about this?” she asks, finally.  “Who else is responsible for this?”

“No one who hasn’t already been killed,” he says, shrugging.  “But I have plenty of paperwork that I can show you, if you’re asking me to prove it to you.”

She raises her gun up again, shaking as she holds it up to his face.  “Do you even understand that these people were my  _friends_?  I  _delivered_  that child!  If this is true, what you have done to them…it’s beyond a violation, it’s a perversion of humanity, it’s–it’s–it’s an absolutely  _unfathomable_  disregard for their bodies and their hearts,” she seethes.  “Tell me why I shouldn’t put a bullet in your head right now.”

He exhales out another mouthful of smoke.  “Well, there’s nothing stopping you.  But I hope you’ll stop and consider that what you know means that you are holding the fate of more than just your old friends in your hands.  That boy is the key to everything, Monica.  A very dangerous, very unpredictable key.”

She lowers her gun again slowly, resigned.  “What the hell do you want from me?”

“You helped hide him away all those years ago.  Now I need you to find him.”

___

“I asked to find the strength to stay on this journey,” Scully whispers into Mulder’s ear.  “I want to believe that I am ready to stop running away.”

She pulls her lips back away from his ear, her eyes wet, her heart split open, bleeding.  She sends up a silent prayer that he hears the apology embedded in her words.  She prays for the absolution of all the guilt he has carried for the last two decades

“That’s not my four year old self hoping for a miracle,” she says, struggling to maintain her composure. “That’s my leap of faith forward.  And I’d like to do it together.”

She prays that she won’t be the one that hurts him anymore.

“I always wondered how this was going to end,” he says, and she knows by the sound of his voice and the expression on his face that he has heard her.  She knows that he understands.

He lights another candle for the both of them.  For Scully, even he will pray.

___

William stands at the center of a bloodbath.  

_“My name is Jackson Van De Kamp.”_

William, days old and tucked into blankets, in his father’s arms.

_“My original name was William, I’ve come to learn…”_

Nameless figures explode all around him, entrails littered across a motel room carpet.  Mulder lies in shock on the floor, suspended in disbelief.   
  
_“I don’t know my role in the future,”_  he says, little more than just a whisper in the background,  _“but I’m beginning to understand that, as well.”_

William reaches out to a buffalo mobile hanging over his crib.  

_“What I need most right now is answers. About who I am, about how I can get my life back.”_

___

Scully grips Mulder’s hand tightly on a windy, deserted beach.  The light is ethereal around her, and she feels heavy, like her body is made of stone.  The wreckage of a spaceship made out of sand is laid out in front of her.   A boy, no more than about eight years old, is walking away from them, into the water.

“William?  William, is that you?” she yells, panicked.

“William!  William!  William, what are you doing?  Stop!” Mulder cries out, and tries to move forward, but some unseen force holds him in place.

“None of this was meant for you,” the boy says flatly, his eyes empty.  “You have to let me go,” he whispers, shimmering evanescently at the horizon before he disappears under the waves.


End file.
